Tag Archives: Syria

FNS – Inclusion – More on the Gay Community – Abuse in Russia

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

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“By turning a blind eye to hateful homophobic rhetoric and violence, Russian authorities are sending a dangerous message as the world is about to arrive on its doorstep for the Olympics that there is nothing wrong with attacks on gay people,” Tanya Cooper, a Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times.

Human Rights Watch Releases Video Showing Anti-Gay Attacks in Russia – 2/4/2014.

Russia: Gay Men Beaten on Camera – YouTube – 2/3/2014.

Sochi: Eyes on the Money

Probably, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy with the $50 billion investment in Sochi and hopes for a glamorous Winter Olympics is to play to global business and profit motive while hoping that the demons and ghouls attending the Syrian Civil War stay away.

Related: Putin’s Russia: Sochi Or Bust – Business Insider – 2/1/2014; MOSCOW: For Putin, Sochi Olympics carry big risks, rewards – Business Breaking News – MiamiHerald.com – 1/29/2014; Scandal in Sochi: The Most Expensive Winter Olympic Games Ever | Vanity Fair – 2/2014; The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Cost $51 Billion – Businessweek – 1/2/2014; etc.

The other blindside involves an eastern European-type drift into resurgent nationalism, which is nothing new for Putin’s Russia; in fact, it could be leading the pack.

(Is there a Russia –> Syria –> Iran –> Hungarian Jobbik relationship in place)?

The gay thing, rather like the Jew thing, signals other things that are never good.

Related: Putin is losing the Sochi Olympic game – Jackson Dhiehl – The Washington Post – 2/3/2014.

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The Russian President’s decision to sign a law prohibiting ‘the propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors’ last summer probably made sense to him at the time. This measure, along with one that bans the adoption of Russian children not just by homosexuals but also by heterosexuals residing in countries that have gay marriage on the books, is reportedly supported by 74 per cent of Russians. And Putin has for years been able to get away with much worse: invading (and still occupying) Georgia, fuelling Assad’s murder machine, rigging elections, jailing journalists and opposition activists. Other than the odd bleat of protest from the European Union or US State Department, all that has had few serious consequences.

But Putin can’t have anticipated the magnitude of worldwide outrage that would pour forth in response to his gay propaganda law.

Sochi Olympics: Why picking on gays has backfired so horribly for Vladimir Putin » The Spectator – James Kirchick – 2/1/2014.

For the vast expanse of research available as regards homosexuality in nature and in humanity, all may be bypassed by way of a simple binary: is mankind to pursue exclusivity amid infinite possibilities for discrimination or is the world — or perhaps the intellectual leadership of it — to pursue a course in inclusion with appreciate and tolerance for as much differentiation as may be possible with peace?

I’ve added to the sidebar of this blog four of the values and virtues I feel most relevant to developing a more peaceful global village — compassion, humility, inclusion, integrity — but I’ve added a wildcard: “empathy”.

The possession of empathy in human affairs would seem not only not given but more likely absent than present around the world.

In the west, actors, artists, and writers encounter the concept early, and those who may favor color, engineering, mathematics, and pattern over social drivers in their arts may dispense with this imaginative element potential in their own humanity and go on to make things that have presence  in a language absent of a great part and potential in humanity.

Others, especially actors and writers, have always before them the challenge of inhabiting someone else’s perspective.  If they haven’t that ability — or ability to cultivate empathy and live a few moments in other shoes — they will not be actors or writers or even, really, very good humans . . . which might bring us back to Putin, Sochi, Syria, and gay bashing in Russia.

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I had not intended to write about the gay community at all this morning, but in the way of the web and social networks, some set of items and opportunities always appears in material streaming across the desktop, and it happens that some things come together and one works with the themes.

Had the suspect in a Seattle nightclub fire chosen a straight bar for a target, the post about it on a conflict-analyzing blog would not have had the cast it took.

The same applies here with Sochi.  The news turns up this facet of Russian nationalism — Islamic Jihad compulsively persecutes gays and, whaddayaknow, Russian nationalists do too! — and one merely makes note of the observation.

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FTAC – Syria’s Displaced Middle Temperament

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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The UN is an incredibly conservative organization: it wants things returned to the way they were three years ago or more than six decades ago.

Fortunately, Syria is done.

Assad will never get it back; Islamic Jihad will never get it.

Someone needs to wake up to the idea that Syria’s six to eight million internally displaced and refugee have an inherent right to regain their land, and should that include the development of a peaceful buffer with Israel . . . . 🙂 It’s not so easy, I know, but it would make more sense if the greater of the fighting ranks, state military and revolutionary forces, were to draw (had drawn, would now draw) from the middle of the society displaced or trapped between similarly malignant and anachronistic powers.

Toward the end of last week, I suggested a re-think on the part of President Bashar al-Assad’s “coup proof” military: if there’s any humanity left in, it alone could negotiate a strategy with General Idris, whom it knows well, depose the dictator, fend off the al-Qaeda affiliates, reform or update (in a good way) Hezbollah, tell Putin and the Ayatollah both how the New Syria is going to be, make peace with Israel, now that Israel has provided more than 700 Syrians with emergency medical services (and returned them incognito to Syria), and forge a genuinely new path into the global future.

Wishful thinking.

The inspiration for it: Israel enmeshed in complex Syrian refugee crisis | JPost | Israel News – 2/2/2014.

If there world worked right, some kind of refugee region and buffer would form along Israel’s defense line under — this is the hard part — Israeli suzerainty while the Syrian Civil War continues.  The population would then become a de factor protectorate with extraordinary benefits.

The fact of the matter is that everything about the Syrian Civil War, from the collapse into chaos and sadism of the old Soviet political architecture, now post-Soviet, to the incursion by the al-Qaeda affiliates and seduced adolescent and early post-adolescent boys and girls, is indeed anachronistic and malignant.

Not one inch of either is working for good and legitimate ends, nor will they.

It seems like only yesterday that Syrians dared complain to the Assad regime about the state of their economy.

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FTAC – A Comment on Yarmouk Camp and Turkish Airstrike Against ISIS

30 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

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You have asked a difficult question. The sentimental guidance offered by Hillel the Elder seems insufficient in the face of immense suffering, not only in Syria, but in Burma (genocide targeting a tribal Muslim people), in Congo (the land of child slaves and child soldiers), and a thousand other places (probably fewer, but still, it’s pretty bad): “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?”

What is our humanity? What is our obligation as regards the humanity of others?

Gaza officialdom may bleat, hate, and whine about Zionists, but Gaza business and labor and basic service providers work every day with Israel in the interests of commerce and development.

Jews go everywhere — even to the other side, lol — where need exists.

With everyone else, we / Jews / Israel are helping Syrians with emergency medicine and supplies — not leading the pack (I don’t know who is) but there even with a minimum of recognition.

The remaining residents of the Yarmouk Camp, kept separated from Syrian, used as tools for some future Arab war of annihilation to erase Jewry and Judaism (the better to claim originality for Islam, I guess), are starving — being made to starve — between armies. What did they — now women, children, and old men — do to deserve or bring on that fate?

No one has intervened militarily in Yarmouk Camp because no one outside of the Syrian conflict knows how to play a rescue operation, much less coordinate one with so many parties ringside.

In 2007, Lebanese Defense Forces managed to evacuate Nahr al-Bared, another refugee “camp”, by checking through residents at one gate and busing them away to another camp. By agreement with other Arab states, they were forbidden to enter Nahr al-Bared, so they got the residents out, left the foreign fighters in, and using tanks razed the entire city, once of 30,000 souls, to the ground — and then they bombed what was left of resistance in tunnels.

Yarmouk? It’s like watching people drown and no one can get through the sharks surrounding them to save them.

Since day one of live fire, Syrians on the receiving end — now millions either dead, maimed, displaced, or refugee — have begged the world for help, and the great politicians surrounding have played like gamblers at a felt table: one wants things to be as they were, primarily because the money was very good with the way things were — and it’s still very good with the way things are; another wants a moderate messianic miracle, i.e., an Arab democracy, capitalist, open, and in love with Israel.

Some 130,000 casualties later plus six million souls robbed of their former lives and their businesses, jobs, and homes, business seems to be booming around the care of the victims of war, not that it’s making money, but it seems easier delivering tents, clothing, food, and water, and some medicine to those bereft than it does producing sufficient international cooperation to remove Assad, shut down the al-Qaeda affiliates, and freeze Syria (no pun intended) into a state (of existence) approachable for constitutional and physical reconstruction.

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In an unprecedented incident yesterday, Wednesday, Turkish jets attacked a Jihadist convoy on Syrian soil after 2 of their own military vehicles had been fired upon near the Turkish/Syrian border.

The incident happened near the Cobanbey border crossing in the south of Turkey. The jets reportedly destroyed a pick-up, a truck and a bus all belonging to the extreme Jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS). There were no casualties on the Turkish side.

IN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE TURKISH JETS DESTROY ISIS CONVOY IN SYRIA AFTER ITS MILITARY COMES UNDER FIRE | altahrir, news of Islam, Muslims, Arab Spring and special Palestine; SYRIA NEWS | Peter Clifford Online – 1/30/2014.

I don’t know whose using money to sew so much chaos in the middle east, but now pressured by an immense refugee challenge, the want to get at its sources all around may be quite high.

It appears yesterday’s strike by Turkey involved a clear tit-for-tat exchange of fire, but the Turkish military, which has traded with Israel for its hardware, more a while ago, I’m sure less today, and has NATO cooperation in the region, is the more formidable power.

Perhaps the Turks have also had enough of “spillover” from Syria’s civil war.

Additional Reference

Israel ‘cuts arms sales to Turkey’ – UPI.com – 4/26/2010.

Israel supplies Turkey with military equipment for first time since Gaza flotilla – Diplomacy & Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 2/18/2013.

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Social Grammar – Syria Style

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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My name is Abu Amr.  I am thirteen, from Bin Laden Front.  I studied the teachings in the book of Allah to defend the Muslims in Syria.  I pray to Allah that I am granted martyrdom (6:56)

Syria: Al-Qaeda’s New Home – YouTube – 21:56 – Vice News – 1/22/2014

“So many twisted minds . . . This leaves me speechless! :-/” said “SymbolX” in the comments section of the above video posted.

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Syria||Darya||Assad barrel bombs 29-1-2014 – YouTube – 1/29/2014.

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So many twisted minds, indeed!

Having to do with what you saw demonstrated (I can’t authenticate video without wider cooperation from media) in the above video:

Syrian government forces dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held districts of Aleppo Wednesday, killing 13 people as they pressed an assault southeast of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported more than 20 barrel bombs had been dropped on the town of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus.

Barrel bombs kill 13 in Syria’s Aleppo, says NGO – Al Arabiya News – 1/29/2014.

The video preceding this section’s quotation features one explosion.

Imagine nineteen more battering the same area.

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In the romance of the west, aristocrat or pioneer, some grandfathers take their 13-year-old boys hunting, it’s true.  Age of Bar Mitzva, of passage into basic adulthood with some emotion and responsibility . . . it’s not bad.  You can still build model airplanes, go scouting, play Little League baseball, collect butterflies, snitch a smoke, and such; however, good or bad, we usually wait another four or five years before putting a boy in uniform, and then putting the boy in uniform in harm’s way.

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However, what I’ve just described is life beside the presence of western humanism, its institutions, and its laws

Out of school, on the street, in the field, things might be different.

You’re Not Taking Him – Stand by Me (7/8) Movie CLIP (1986) HD – YouTube – posted 10/5/2012.

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Syria – al-Qaeda – Putin – Obama – American Isolationism – Foreign Constituent Independence

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion, Syria

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The United States has picked up where it left off more than a month ago and started shipping nonlethal aid to Syria in hopes that al Qaeda won’t seize it and keep it from reaching its intended rebel fighting recipients.

U.S. restarts aid to Syria, hoping al Qaeda won’t seize it again – Washington Times – 1/28/2014.

Officials may have strengthened the chain of custody by winnowing down the trustworthy to “Free Syrian Army Supreme Military Council members”.

Last night’s State of the Union Address by President Obama emphasized domestic economic progress and de-emphasized foreign policy, and that to the extent that American involvement in the Islamic Small Wars appears to have been pared back to the 12-year-presence in Afghanistan and the diminishing of Islamist strength in that theater with but a nod to the whack-a-mole games played with drones and special forces and familiar to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

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The number of al-Qaeda linked fighters active in Syria has mushroomed from 2,000 to more than 30,000 in just two years, a senior Israeli intelligence official has warned . . . .

Over 30,000 al-Qaeda linked fighters’ in Syria, Israeli official claims – Telegraph – 1/25/2014.

Syrians, ordinary Syrians, Syrians who bake bread or lay brick, Syrians who were hungry three years ago at the hands of their kleptocrat government and sought a better deal for themselves, have been suffering mightily between the malignancies of their regime and a now strong portion of the regime’s challengers.

Where’s Putin now?

Not a word.

Web search “Syria Putin al-Qaeda” and the top page list comes back with the mud slung in early September: it’s the Americans that have backed al-Qaeda.

We know it’s not true.

Americans have backed the above mentioned “Free Syrian Army” led, nominally, at least, by General Salim Idris.  That army has found itself forked between the brutal dictator — this is one who flew jets against large noncombatant populations — and the equally unconstrained primitives of the al-Qaeda affiliates.

Read the still recent headlines:

FSA chief: Free National Army is a pipe dream « ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 1/16/2014.

‘We don’t have long,’ say Syrian rebels locked in battle with Al Qaeda, Assad | Fox News – 1/17/2014.

President Obama turned up the populist card last night with brags about progress in the American system within its borders, from energy independence to health care, and while he proffered continued support for nascent democracies in war torn space, he made clear that American troops were staying at home.

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“Dozens of Antonov 124s (Russian transport planes) have been bringing in armored vehicles, surveillance equipment, radars, electronic warfare systems, spare parts for helicopters, and various weapons including guided bombs for planes,” a Middle East security source said.

“Russian advisers and intelligence experts have been running observation UAVs around the clock to help Syrian forces track rebel positions, analyze their capabilities, and carry out precision artillery and air force strikes against them,” said the source, who declined to be identified.

Report: Russia stepping up military aid to Syria’s Assad | JPost | Israel News – 1/17/2014.

Perhaps in Putin’s cold political calculus, Syria will be held in The Bear’s paw at any price to Syria’s humanity.

President Bashar Assad’s military and the Free Syrian Army may wake up to realize that their enmity may be misdirected, for the true axis is not, has never been, Assad vs al-Qaeda but rather The People vs Assad.  Forget about that old rusty post-Soviet chain: Russia – Syria – Iran | Saudi Arabia – NATO – America.

Syria is.

Syria exists for Syrians.

Syrians internally displaced or made refugee by war — about nine million souls (6.5 million IDPs; 2.1 million refugees) —  need peace and home for themselves, and all they have for getting that are two armies, in body, and their differential in leaderships, that should be the last to be at their own throats.

As much hell comes from misguidance and propaganda helped along by a surrounding sea of greed.

Obama’s America with NATO returned to a defensive posture would seem to have zero interest in intervention in Syria apart from keep General Idris’s enterprise in sufficient weaponry for maintaining the three-way stalemate while talk-talk-talk fills time.

Putin’s Russia, which well may view Syria as part of its post-Soviet inheritance, seems immune to humanitarian overtures apart from bending, twisting, and spinning it some around Bashar al-Assad, who in state propaganda and RT has been made to look like a blameless angel.

So far as may be gleaned from the news online, Putin’s in it for the money and to maintain an anti-western post in a client buffer.

Compared to Putin’s glory — and how glorious that glory will be at the $50 billion Winter Olympics in Sochi — the depth and expanse of civilian Syrian suffering, in state and splayed out in the refugee camps of hosting neighbors, would seem by comparison invisible.

Here’s another cycle in headers:

Russia And China Provide Practically No Aid To Syrian Refugees | ThinkProgress – 9/3/2013.

Russia Provides $10M to Syrian Refugees | World | RIA Novosti – 10/1/2013.

Russia to Send Additional Humanitarian Aid for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon — Naharnet – 11/25/2013.

Donors Offer $2.4 Billion to Aid Syrian Civilians, but U.N. Says More Is Needed – NYTimes.com – 1/15/2014.

Get the picture?

Perhaps this will help: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s $50-billion Olympic Games | Toronto Star – 6/25/2014.

Disclaimer: I confess I now write with a “nice pen”, acknowledged as such by an expert.  It’s best feature is its 21 karat gold medium-fine nib, so I know a little bit about fine things too!  But my fine things would seem fit to living in a cabin, which is more or less how I live (but I can dream).

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I have seen the face of suffering and hate online in many faces.  Someone has been lied to or manipulated; someone has a mind confined to state media or a wallet meagerly fattened by the patronage of a despot, a shameful situation where conscience and ethics have not been entirely extinguished.  What may be done to repair that person?  Or, collectively, such people captive to closed information (remember: mouth – ear – mind – heart) systems?

I don’t know.

I do know the world online is larger than the space in which I live and the freedom to speak has its complement in the freedom to read, listen, or watch widely with great curiosity and with some ambition and discipline as regards discerning the nature of things.

Additional Reference

Syria talks face immediate hurdle of Assad’s refusal to step down | World news | The Guardian – 1/19/2014

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Syriamania – Rock and Roll!

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology, Syria

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About a dozen French adolescents have left for Syria to join jihadi groups or are trying to go, a phenomenon that’s accelerating, France’s interior minister said Sunday.

The civil war to oust President Bashir Assad has attracted more French, and Westerners, than other battlegrounds like Afghanistan ever did. Thousands of Europeans are fighting in Syria and nearly 700 French citizens or residents are in some way involved, Manual Valls said. But teenagers drawn to jihadi organizations fighting there is a “particular phenomenon.”

Minister: French Teens Go to Syria for Jihad – ABC News – 1/19/2014.

“He was killed fighting, he was killed in Syria,” he said.

Irish Teen Shamseddin Gaidan Who Joined Syria Rebels Killed – 2/23/2013.

Norwegian police have issued international alerts for two teenage sisters believed to have travelled to Syria to join the civil war.

Norwegian sisters, 16 and 19, ‘travel to Syria to help Muslims’ | Mail Online – 10/21/2013.

Brian was raised Catholic and rarely got into trouble.

The Belgian Teen Who Went to Fight in Syria: The Brian De Mulder Story | TIME.com – 3/22/2013.

A criminal complaint accused Tounisi of making online contact in March with a person he thought was a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusrah, the militant Islamist Syrian group that the U.S. government calls a foreign terrorist organization operating as a wing of al Qaeda in Iraq.

US teen accused of seeking to join al Qaeda-linked Syrian group – U.S. News – 4/20/2013.

Well, he tried.

It is estimated that at least 100 Canadians — mainly in their 20s and coming from Ontario and Alberta — have left for Syria in the past year, joining a steady march of foreigners drawn to the conflict, security sources say.

Canadians hurrying to Syria in record numbers to join rebels | Toronto Star – 8/23/2013.

By the time of his death in Syria, Andre Poulin from Timmins, Ont., had become a battle-hardened jihadi known as Abu Muslim.

Andre Poulin, jihadi from Timmins, Ont., confirmed dead in Syria – CBC News – Latest Canada, World, Entertainment and Business News – 1/16/2014.

A 22-year-old Canadian-born Muslim convert who left Calgary for Syria in November 2012 has been killed by Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces during rebel infighting, CBC News has confirmed.

Damian Clairmont killed fighting with al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria – World – CBC News – 1/15/2014.

Germany’s domestic security agency has recorded what experts regard as an alarming trend. A growing number of young Germans are traveling to Syria to aid the opposition, potentially getting “radicalized” along the way.

German Muslims leaving to fight jihad in Syria – 9/8/2013.

A former Germany youth international was killed in the Syrian civil war last month, it has emerged.

German media reported that Burak Karan, 26, was killed in action on Oct. 11, and the nation’s intelligence agencies confirmed the news of his death on Monday.

Former Germany youth international Burak Karan killed in Syria – ESPN FC – 11/19/2013.

I thought the conflict in Syria was a civil war.

It turns out it’s a youth movement.

Screw the cars and guitars, man — get a real instrument of destruction:

French Nationale FNC automatic rifle most prevalent among Syria's revolutionary forces. Credit Path: Wikimedia Commons back to CeCILL freeware distribution license.

French Nationale FNC automatic rifle most prevalent among Syria’s revolutionary forces. Credit Path: Wikimedia Commons back to CeCILL freeware distribution license.

Referring Page: Guns of Syria

Not to knock the youth too much, the zeal to get the raging hormones to the war raging would seem inseparable from the adoption of the script set out to snag them and reel them into an abattoir that appears to them authentic, glorious, large, and obligatory.

The latest in Angry Young Men, by and large, has not been left entirely lopsided.

Editor’s note June 19:

Saudi sheikh Muhammad al-‘Arifi denied issuing a fatwa which purportedly sanctioned the rape of Syrian women, saying that “no sane person” would issue such an edict. We regret not including that information when this column originally was published.

Guest Column: The ‘Sex Jihad’ :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism – 6/18-19/2013.

Raymond Ibrahim posts always with integrity to outlets, but the story and associated denials have developed something of a life online, which includes a Wikileaks piece more validating the prostitution than scrubbing it.

The once-sleepy smugglers’ nest on the Turkish border has become a mecca for jihad tourists from around the world.

Foreign Jihadists in Syria Favor Liberal Transit Towns over Front – SPIEGEL ONLINE – 9/27/2013.

The posted header on the above article reads, “Video Games and Cigarettes: Syria’s Disneyland for Jihadists.”

Syria: ah, just another Teen Paradise, one for Muslim “reverts” from Catholicism — or modern Muslim families — and for adolescents and post-adolescent adolescents who are not from Syria.

For Syrian teens, however, the experience of the Syrian Civil War may have another cast altogether.

Related Reference

Syria: teens living in the conflict zone – British Red Cross blog – 11/23/2012.

Addendum

My Friend, the Aspiring Suicide Bomber | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 3/12/2013: “Al-Qaeda are good!” he told me, with a smile and a double thumbs up. “I hope that they’ll accept me and that one day I can set off a suicide bomb in a regime area.”

This, I swear, was not premeditated.  I simply wanted to look up the writer of the above quoted piece and found her web site:

A message flashed up on my phone just before 10 o’clock tonight: “Molham died today.”

On the death of another Syrian | Stuff from my notebook – 12/20/2013.

Hannah, if you glance at this blog, I’m sorry to hear of the loss and was not in the least expecting it up top on your blog.

Readers note the date: 12/20/2013, and if you click through you will find the bomb-on-two-legs wannabe didn’t die that way but as a war photographer.

Young photographer killed in Syria conflict – PhotoBlog – 12/20/2013.

Not too long ago and in relation to the music side of my life, I thought to look up old rockers and find out how many of the “they all do drugs” crowd had actually died along the way.  Rather few, it turns out, but that in light of the size the 1960s and 1970s cohort of entertainers in the field.  What occurred to me while revisiting, say, the Rolling Stones saga is that the bands and the myths they created about themselves may have been harder on the fans than on the musicians.  Keith Richards, for example, remains among the living: countless music fans, not exclusively but living the rock-and-roll life in their various ways, don’t.  The degree of direct influence cannot be measured small or large, but the atmosphere, the teen spirit of its day, created its own culture, and that culture was not squeaky clean and all nice-nice.

That’s why we loved it.

Postscript

Joining Syrian ranks of al-Qaeda ‘in vogue’ for young British Muslims – Telegraph – 3/3/2014.

LA Gang Members in Syria: Organized Crime, Terrorism ‘Converge’ – ABC News – 3/4/2014.

“It’s not about ideals – 90% of them never subscribe to the ideals,” former radical Alyas Karmani, now a peace activist, says in the film. “It’s other factors that are a draw. This is the new rock-and-roll; jihad is sexy. The kid who was not very good-looking now looks good holding a gun. He can get a bride now, he’s powerful. The ISIS gun is as much a penis extension as the stockbroker with his Ferrari.”

Balofsky, Ahuva.  “ISIS Marketing Itself as ‘Sexy’ to Youth, Says Former Radical.”  Breaking Israel News, August 6, 2015

As innocent and maternal as that may sound, it may also reveal the extent of her commitment: ISIS propaganda has featured children executing prisoners in the style of a video game, and refers to boys groomed to be fighters as “cubs.” There were signs that Jaelyn understood the horrific violence of the group she longed to join. After a sailor and four Marines were murdered in July in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she celebrated. Praise be to God, she said, “the numbers of supporters are growing.”

Green, Emma.  “How Two Mississippi College Students Fell in Love and Decided to Join a Terrorist Group.”  The Atlantic, May 1, 2017.

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